John Peter Maher Curriculum Vitae
John Peter Maher was born of Irish parents in New York State in 1933.
In 1955 he earned his B. A. from the State University of New York
at Binghamton and took an M. A. in Greek and Latin at The Catholic
University of America in Washington D. C. After studying the Serbo-Croatian
language at U. S. Army Language School in Monterey, California, he
served on the Yugoslav desk of the 430th Military Intelligence Battalion
in northern Italy from1959 to 1961, at the height of the Cold War.
After his army hitch he took a doctorate in historical linguistics
at Indiana University, minoring in Latin and Slavic. He had been a
language teacher in New York State high schools for three years, when
in 1964 he began in university teaching in Chicago. In 1974 he was
awarded a tenured chair of English linguistics in the University of
Hamburg, Germany, where he directed the Third International Conference
on Historical Linguistics (1977). The same year he returned to Chicago.
In 1993 he was appointed professor emeritus. Since then he has concentrated
his research and writing on the subject of propaganda in the current
Balkan wars.
His research specialty is the interface of language and culture
in modern languages and reconstructing culture from language evidence
of ancient, medieval and prehistoric European languages on the basis
of Greek, Celtic, Latin, Romance, Germanic, and Slavic vocabulary.
He is one of the few original etymologists working today. He has
published critical works in theoretical linguistics and has served
on the editorial boards of several journals. He has held Fulbright
lecturing and research grants in Ireland, Italy, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia
and Yugoslavia. In 1997 he was an invited lecturer on H0ungarian language
and culture at the Budapest meeting of Young Presidents Organization.
In October 1997 he was the guest of Dr. Biljana Plavšić, Prime Minister
of Republika Srpska in Banja Luka. n December 1999 he was a pilgrim
to Hilendar / Hilandar, the ancient Serb monastery on Mount Athos
/ Sveta Gora, to AgiÓn OroV, near Thessalonika,
Greece.
In October 1997 he conferred with Dr. Biljana Plavšić, then Prime
Minister of Republika Srpska in Banja Luka. In December 1998 he was
a pilgrim to the ancient Serb monastery on Mount Athos / Sveta Gora
/ to Hagion Oros, near Thessalonika, Greece.
